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This recent season, I was caught in congested traffic on the scorching streets of a southern French city. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat suggested a right turn toward a famous spot for bouillabaisse. Yet, the digital guide on my phone instructed us to continue straight. Fatigued and in a stifling car, I heeded the app's directive. Minutes later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A seemingly trivial event, maybe. But one that captures a central question of our time, where technology touches nearly every facet of our lives: whom do we trust more – other people and our own intuition, or the machine?

The Enlightenment's Promise and Our Modern Relapse

The influential German philosopher Immanuel Kant once defined the Enlightenment as "humanity's emergence from its self-imposed immaturity." This state, he argued, "represents the incapacity to use one's personal reason without guidance from an external source." For centuries, that directing force for human thought was frequently the priest, the king, or the feudal lord – figures claiming to channel divine will. To comprehend natural events like changing seasons, people sought answers in religion. In organizing the social world, from commerce to love, faith served as the main compass.

“Sapere aude!” or “Dare to use your reason!”

Kant maintained that humans had the ability to think rationally. They simply lacked the confidence to employ it. With upheavals in America and France, a new dawn emerged: reason would replace blind faith, and the human mind, freed from authority, would become the driver of advancement and a better world.

Today, 250 years later, one might wonder if we are quietly regressing into a state of intellectual immaturity. An app suggesting a direction is merely the start. Artificial intelligence threatens to become our new "other" – a silent guide that influences our decisions and actions. We are in danger of relinquishing the historically earned autonomy to think independently – and now, not to deities or rulers, but to lines of code.

The Rapid Rise and Hidden Risks of AI Dependence

ChatGPT was launched a mere three years ago, and yet a global survey found that an vast number of respondents had used AI in the preceding half-year. Whether contemplating ending a relationship or choosing a candidate, individuals are looking to algorithms for guidance. Research suggests a significant portion of user queries relate to personal life matters. Even more intriguing than our reliance on AI for advice is what happens when we allow it express for us. Writing is now one of the top uses for generative AI, second only to practical requests. The celebrated American author Joan Didion once remarked, “I write purely to discover what I am thinking.” What occurs when we stop composing? Do we cease discovering?

Alarmingly, emerging research suggests the outcome may be affirmative. A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology used brain monitoring to observe the cognitive activity of participants who had could use AI, Google, or nothing. Those who could rely on AI displayed the least cognitive engagement and had difficulty quoting their own work. Maybe most concerning was that after a few months, participants in the AI group grew progressively lazier, pasting large sections of text.

“Inertia and fear,” Kant wrote, “are the reasons why so many of men … stay in lifelong immaturity.”

Certainly, AI's appeal lies in its efficiency. It saves time, minimizes work and – importantly – offers a novel way to abdicate accountability. In his 1941 book, Escape from Freedom, the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm proposed that the appeal of authoritarianism could be understood by a preference to surrender autonomy in exchange for the reassuring certainty of obedience. AI presents a modern method of surrendering the weight of having to think and choose.

The Black Box Problem: Faith Over Reason

AI's greatest allure is its capacity to accomplish things outside our minds – analyzing vast datasets at unprecedented speed. Stuck in the car in Marseille, this was, ultimately, why I chose to trust the app over my companion (a decision she interpreted as an affront). With knowledge of real-time information, surely the algorithm had superior insight – or so I believed.

The core issue is that AI operates as a opaque system. It produces knowledge, but without necessarily fostering human comprehension. We cannot fully grasp the process behind its decisions – even its programmers acknowledge the opacity. Nor can we verify its reasoning against clear, objective criteria. So when we heed AI's advice, we are not being led by logic. We are returning to the domain of faith. In dubio pro machina: when in doubt, side with the machine – that may become our future credo.

Harnessing Without Eroding: The Critical Balance

AI can be a formidable ally for humanity in scientific pursuit. It can help medical research, liberate us from tedious tasks, or handle taxes – work that demand little thought and offer little satisfaction. All to the good. But Kant and his peers did not advocate for reason over faith just so humans could optimize chores or have extra free time. Critical thinking was not merely about efficiency – it was a discipline of freedom and human self-determination.

Human thought is inherently messy and fallible, but it forces us to debate, to question, to challenge concepts – and to recognize the boundaries of our own knowledge. It fosters self-reliance, both personally and collectively. For Kant, the exercise of reason was never only about acquiring knowledge; it was about enabling people to become agents of their own lives, and to resist domination. It was about building a ethical society grounded in the shared principle of reason and debate, rather than unquestioning acceptance.

With all the undeniable benefits AI offers, the paramount challenge is this: how can we harness its potential of superhuman intelligence without undermining human reasoning, the bedrock of the Enlightenment and of liberal democracy themselves? That may be one of the defining questions of our time. It is a question we must strive not to outsource to the machine.